Does anyone have any feelings about Tarkas' bad odds at Photonic Torpedo?

By this point, I'm absolutely used to Tarkas. They're the "newbie" race; the race is stream-lined and has very few "tricks" to it. If you want early-game power, you work for UV lasers and use them to back your destroyers. Mid game, you get the famous Tarka cruiser, get phasers (unlikely), AP gauss drivers, heavy beams, or pack fusion cannons, perhaps with fire control to enhance range. Late game, you play around with dreadnoughts, maybe AP Mass Drivers, maybe anti-matter cannons, and hope to win. If the game goes on long enough, you get Battle Riders and crush everyone with your carrier-section dreadnoughts.

One aspect, however, of Tarkas, I think is interesting. They have the best odds in the game at torpedoes, but have some of the worst torpedo carriers in the game. They have good destroyer level torpedo launchers, with reasonable levels of speed, and a brutal and flexible command section, but at cruiser and above you probably don't want to use torpedoes for the reason that Tarkas cruisers can only pack 2 torpedoes per ship. Once you close in to short-range, your torpedoes deal much reduced damage, so in effective it's closer to a Roman Pilum; you launch at long range hoping to obtain "effect", then finish the killing action with short-range combat.

Let's consider a hypothetical change to Tarkas Photonic Torpedoes. During the Destroyer phase of the game, Tarkas would lose their racial distinction if Photonic Torpedoes became reliably available. They would then be able to use Photonic Torpedoes with UV laser fronts to produce an extremely powerful attack ground; from long-range Photonic Torpedoes would shred incoming ships, and in short-range enemy ships would be shredded by UV lasers. It would be a rather imbalanced prospect, and to some extent "un-Tarka-like", since Tarka tactics revolve around either kiting with missiles or just destroying the enemy in close-range with cheap cruisers and powerful short-range weapons. This tactic, instead, would be just sitting at far-range and taking pot-shots at your opponent, secure in the knowledge that if your opponent goes close, they'll get decimated by Tarka command section weapons. It's closer to human tactics than Tarka tactics, so it would be unsuitable for the Tarkas racial flavor.

However, what about giving Tarkas Photonic Torpedoes in the Fusion Era? Would that be acceptable? Give Tarkas a second chance at getting Photonic Torpedoes in the fusion era. In this case, then, most races should already be in the cruiser age, so if Tarkas attempted to destroyer turtle, they would get destroyed up close due to the weakness of small weapons mounts against cruiser-level systems. If Tarkas attempted to cruiser turtle, then Tarkas would be at a severe disadvantage due to the fact that Tarkas cruisers can only mount 2 torpedoes and the fact that those ship sections penalize Tarkas short-range performance, with a rather mediocre Assault Section.

The key Tarkas feature I think this would change would be the fact that Tarkas loves to use the largest ship available. Since they have poor torpedo sections on cruisers, Torpedoes aren't a viable weapon in the dreadnought age. Since they have weak laser defenses (poor odds at reflection armor, improved reflective armor), their destroyers (outside of specialists like point defense or wild-weasel) are not really viable in the cruiser age.

This change, then, would make it so that Tarkas destroyers and cruisers would become viable as primary combatants. How would you feel about such a change?

And yes, I guess my shtick is "why can't Tarkas use long-range weapons if they're billed as combat generalists?"

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One other way to look at this is that photonic torpedo technology is a human specialty. However, Morrigi also get good odds towards this technology, while the Liir, who are penalized towards torpedo technology, and the Hivers, who are average at torpedoes, don't have a chance. It could just be that Photonic Torpedo technology is a human specialty, but Morrigi racial identity demands that they're let into this human specialty. Letting the Tarkas in as well, on the other hand, is a dumb move. We can then justify Tarkas torpedo technology as being technological researches for their torpedo defense platforms, which, incidentally, sees very little use due to the difficulty of getting a Tarka drone-death swarm; Tarkas' poor research means that they rarely have the lee-way to buy "support" technologies instead of technologies that by themselves can translate to a killer advantage.

You know, it would be a lot simpler to leave Tarka torp odds alone and put some AP heavy drivers on your war cruisers and spinal destroyers if you want a longer ranged direct fire weapon prior to Impactor and/or COL cracker cruisers...

Yeah.... Tarka may consider torpedoes to be an "accessory" on anything that's not a destroyer... on the other hand, they're guaranteed impactors and have pretty decent chances for antimatter flavored missiles and cracker COL too, so long range bombardment is hardly a flop for them.And their torpedo DEs are not shabby either.

In the DN age DNs tend to be 2x as good as cruisers pound for pound for two reasons: they have ~33% more turrets, slightly more health when scaled up (20% or so), and they have to lose all their HP to fail, translating to something like 50% more health.

Re: Mere Photon Torpedoes, I mean the non-homing damage torpedo line. I would like to see Tarkas with decent odds towards Gluonic and Mesonic torpedoes as well, but this is merely my proposition.

ZedF: There's a difference between Tarka gluonic torpedoes and AP heavy drivers. Besides, the way I play right now (1v1cv1cv1c 32 star FFA) I never have time to buy support weapons. Each technology I research has to provide a significant effect, instead of merely a support effect.

That said, AP mass drivers are a great substitute for phasers (especially since Tarkas has a poor chance at phasers and phasers require a ton of research) in the cruiser-fusion age, although if I meet Deflectors I'm praying I don't lose too many planets while I research up to Fusion Cannons.

Guy with Reimu avatar: Impactors are now amat technology, and COL is very research intensive.

Inst wrote:Each technology I research has to provide a significant effect, instead of merely a support effect.

Then why do you want torps at all? All torps are largely support weapons. I would say heavy drivers are more of a main weapon than any torp, especially with AP. If you're that worried about research costs, you certainly don't have the time and money to invest in researching down a torp line.

Tarka get a lot more bang for their research dollar from war cruisers and destroyers than from anything that mounts torps. Why not stick with what they do best? If you really want to play a torp-heavy race, pick Liir or Morrigi.

As far as DNs being better than CAs goes... well that all depends on circumstances. I actually find that armament and tactics is at least as important and often more important than hull size in the DN era. Plus DNs tend to cost a lot more money than cruisers; if income is a limiting factor, the ability to pump out 2+ CA fleets for every DN fleet can be a decisive advantage in favour of CAs.

Inst wrote:Guy with Reimu avatar: Impactors are now amat technology, and COL is very research intensive.

COL comes from techs you'll probably want anyway - especially if you like the improved assault shuttles as I do - and impactors come from a tech you'll also want anyway if you're using ballistics. I think it evens out pretty well. And like I said, there's always missiles to bring the sting from afar. Your barrage cruisers get two large missile mounts in addition to your precious torpedo so you'll do well with the Special Fun Missiles. And also, don't knock the Tarka assault command - remember that it has a large turret and valuable point-defense capability! My primary dislike of it is, oddly enough, that it's small - too small to protect the rest of the ship as well as a hammerhead. But that's small potatoes and for longish range won't matter much anyhow.

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And disruptors don't gain all that much from multiple shots per ship, since their effect is instant and doesn't stack. You'd want several ships with one disruptor each rather than one with a bunch of them. This makes sense if you think that the Tarka cruisers are built with disruptors in mind for torpedo tubes.

Inst wrote:Each technology I research has to provide a significant effect, instead of merely a support effect.

Then why do you want torps at all? All torps are largely support weapons. I would say heavy drivers are more of a main weapon than any torp, especially with AP. If you're that worried about research costs, you certainly don't have the time and money to invest in researching down a torp line.

Tarka get a lot more bang for their research dollar from war cruisers and destroyers than from anything that mounts torps. Why not stick with what they do best? If you really want to play a torp-heavy race, pick Liir or Morrigi.

As far as DNs being better than CAs goes... well that all depends on circumstances. I actually find that armament and tactics is at least as important and often more important than hull size in the DN era. Plus DNs tend to cost a lot more money than cruisers; if income is a limiting factor, the ability to pump out 2+ CA fleets for every DN fleet can be a decisive advantage in favour of CAs.

Not if you're playing Morrigi / Liir; their barrage + assault section combos can proffer a mean torpedo salvo; take down the CnC + 1 other cruiser on first salvo, kill another cruiser with HCL, then knife-fight with 3 isolated cruisers in a 2v1 ratio.

The main issue with Torps is that they justify gauss point defense, which is awful against missiles in most scenarios. If torps don't see use, then gauss doesn't see use.

Morrigi and Liir do have great torpedo sections. Whenever I build assault/barrage ships with Morrigi with similar tech levels for all weapons involved (photon torps with HCL, gluonic torps with lancers and heavy fusion cannon etc) the dumbfire torps net more damage in most battles than any of the other weapons. I like the dumb fire type more right now.